Chamber of Commerce seeks to limit EPA regulatory authority

The United States Chamber of Commerce has thrown its political clout behind efforts by the new House Republican majority to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Chamber will support appropriate bipartisan legislation to delay or stop the EPA and return the important climate change issue to the purview of Congress,” Thomas J. Donohue, the Chamber’s president and CEO, said today.

Donohue criticized the Obama administration’s environmental regulations and the slow pace of offshore drilling permits it has issued.

Citing a study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, Donohue said that increasing access to currently off-limits domestic oil and gas reserves could create 530,000 jobs, $150 billion in government revenue and one-fifth of the oil the U.S. uses each day by 2025.

He said government delays in issuing drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 BP oil spill have prompted companies to move drilling rigs and accompanying jobs to other oil producing areas.

“There’s no good or valid reason to send our money to other countries to pay for something we have plenty of right here at home,” Donahue said.